The post doesn't explain why you do A/B testing when you have an entire server of thousands of people for beta testing - and you STILL do A/B on there. Whats the point of beta server if not to do live testing ???
No, they have a secret feedback source that they prefer to listen to that always seems to totally contradict beta feedback, and then when whatever it is goes live, the feedback from live matches that from beta. So therefore everyone is wrong and we get the crap we do.
One reason to do A/B testing on the regular servers, when it isn't simply testing to be sure a change works, is that joining Beta is a self selection that likely results in a systematically different cohort of players. So if they are interested in how regular players react to different options it can give them better information.
Beta is essentially a live server though with people around the world rather than just people who live in the US/ext. There are many of us on beta, more of a mixed bag than rolling things out on the EN server first. A lot of top players on my server are on beta as well and more active on the beta forum than this. Theres no sense to A/B testing when beta should be the A group. As well, beta acts as a safeguard in case of catastrophic failiure after an update. I'm sure there are none too pleased with the mobile ads but they don't generally post on the forums either so nobody was sure that was happening.